1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an attachment structure of a slide rail cover to a vehicle body, and more particularly to an attachment structure of a slide rail cover to a vehicle body which can improve the fitting precision and facilitate the assembly of the slide rail cover to the vehicle body.
2. Description of the Related Art
For example, as shown in FIG. 9, there exists a case where an attachment portion 2 provided at an upper portion of a fender panel 1 is fixed to a front pillar 3 with a screw 4 and an attachment portion 5 provided at a lower portion of the fender panel 1 is fixed to a side sill 6 with a bolt 7 (refer to JP-A-10-67341).
Thus, in a case where a vehicle body part such as the fender panel 1 is fixed directly to locations of the vehicle body such as the front pillar 3 and the side sill 6 which are positioned with a certain precision, a required fitting precision can be attained after the attachment of the fender panel 1 to those locations.
Incidentally, in a vehicle having a slide door, there exists a case where a slide rail cover is fixed to cover an opening in a slide rail fixed to a side of a vehicle body. When attempting to attach the slide rail cover to the vehicle body via the slide rail in order to secure a sliding space for a slide arm, an attachment error of the slide rail to the vehicle body and an attachment error of the slide rail cover to the slide rail are added, and as a result, serve to enhance a fitting error between the vehicle body and the slide rail cover, whereby the external appearance quality is damaged.
To cope with the problem, the attachment precision of the slide rail to the vehicle body and the attachment precision of the slide rail cover to the slide rail need to be set strictly, and this increases the number of man hours in management of the production of vehicles. Thus, there is caused a problem that the strict management of attachment of the slide rail cover to the slide rail increases the production costs in the end.
To cope with the problem, an object of the invention is to provide an attachment structure of a slide rail cover to a vehicle body which can facilitate the production and assembly of respective components such as vehicle body, slide rail, slide rail cover while maintaining the fitting precision.
With a view to attaining the object, according to an aspect of the invention, there is provided an attachment structure of a slide rail cover (for example, a slide rail cover 15 in an embodiment) for covering a slide rail (for example, a slide rail 14 in the embodiment) attached to a side of a vehicle body from the outside of the vehicle body, wherein a slide rail attachment portion (for example, a slide rail attachment hole 38 in the embodiment) and a vehicle body attachment portion (for example, an attachment hole 44 and a through hole 63 in the embodiment) are provided on a main body cover (for example, a main body cover 35 in the embodiment), the slide rail attachment portion being adapted to support the main body cover with rigidity, and the vehicle body attachment portion being adapted to fix the position of the main body cover in vertical and horizontal directions, and in that the position of at least one of the vehicle body attachment portion and the slide rail attachment portion is fixed in a forward or rearward direction of the main body cover.
Thus, according to the construction, since the main body cover only has to be supported with rigidity by the slide rail attachment portion of the main body cover so that the main body cover does not move loosely when touched, there is no need to strictly set the attachment precision of the slide rail to the vehicle body. In addition, the vehicle body attachment portion the main body cover is fixed directly to the vehicle body which provides the fitting precision to thereby facilitate the fixing of the position of the main body cover in vertical and horizontal directions.